Internet Business Share Discussion Threads

[lord buffett] 28/3/2007 15:44

Slapper - it's not (the volume recently has been very low), it's simply that there's a lack of buyers at the moment.

[slapdash] 28/3/2007 15:37

I don't get it .. why is this being aggressively sold??

Slapper

[masurenguy] 28/3/2007 15:00

IPH have a major mountain to climb in order to try and regain any credibility with investors for the future. Best chance of making money with those shares is if they become an aquisition target !

[nghomi] 28/3/2007 14:47

Any views on IPH? Is it now a good value after this drop?

[68steve] 28/3/2007 14:40

I see Jessops have issued a third profit warning today,who needs a digital camera when a mobile phone will give adequate results for joe bloggs.Traditional 35mm photograhy rapidly declining so losing out on devloping &printing,no accessories for them to sell,they will do well to turn things around and ofcourse the competition from the internet will not help..With Woolies also in trouble the high street is in for a tough time...Long live the internet.

[waynerwayner] 28/3/2007 12:52

Interesting read...

[valustar1] 28/3/2007 12:15

IBG have a record of beating forecasts some be a big margin.

They are always very conservative in their forecasts.

Releasing a trading update at 7am on the day of the results would be fine with me and then give us someting upto date to discuss at the AGM.

In particular I am keen to understand what is happening in the USA and with the new Media Division.

[aleman] 28/3/2007 12:04

Some would call for a trading update at an earlier AGM but that can disadvantage the most loyal small shareholders of small companies. I have been sat at an AGM in the past (not IBG) and been given news that I wanted to act on that was going out to the market. It is then a race to do something before the market reacted. I think trading updates and AGMs should be separated.

[nghomi] 28/3/2007 12:04

I doubt we get any negative trading statement. The results were announced 6 weeks ago and everything was according to the management expectations. Market expectation is that the company will meet the guidelines earnings for this year. So 1.9p EPS is expected. It is only about the sentiment at the moment. Mind you that I have not seen any noticable buyer at these prices. There are a lot more small sells at the moment.

[valustar1] 28/3/2007 11:43

The AGM date is likely to be set today and I have asked for it to be posted on the IBG web site asap.

[aleman] 28/3/2007 11:41

It is two months to results and we have no date for the AGM. I think it will come too late for an update, like last year.

[cr4zyness] 28/3/2007 11:36

I agree the catch is patience! ;(

Ive got a feeling this is being worked down to 24p

[valustar1] 28/3/2007 11:35

The catch is no news on current trading.

Hopefully we will get an update at the AGM

[slapdash] 28/3/2007 11:25

hmmm P/E ratio for this year now 13.7X and for 2008 now 9X... and with net cash about 10-15% of the market cap.... also about half way through this year... assumming it his half way the forward calender P/E becomes 11.35X.....and stripping out the cash that becomes 10X forward P/Enterprise value....

so at 26p the forward earnings to enterprise value is 10X (on a calender basis)...

appears cheap so what is the catch??

Slapper

[masurenguy] 28/3/2007 09:58

I agree yump - but also IPH rely on proactive client direct marketing spend but IBG rely more on passive end user search and click through activity.

The IPH/Google comparison was ridiculous !

[yump] 28/3/2007 09:43

Just had a look over at IPH. Doesn't help when people like market watch confuse investors by talking about them and Google in the same breath.

fwiw:
IPH several steps removed from Google in strategy - Google is a response to a search and is 'pull'. IPH is direct marketing email, which is 'push'. World of difference.
IPH totally different from IBG.
IBG actually closer to Google really, in that affiliate adverts are 'pull' ie. they are just there on a webpage, while you are going about your business on the site.

IPH and IBG are both marketing enablers - thats about as close as they get imo.

[wjccghcc] 28/3/2007 09:03

IPH have said the problems are due to weakness in the postal marketing area (who looks at mailshots anymore?) and execution in their data delivery business. I don't see a lot of overlap between IPH and IBG but happy to be corrected.

[nghomi] 28/3/2007 08:18

I see that IPH is collapsing. The question is that if theor problem is company speciofic or an industry issue. Only time will tell.

[hirschnathan] 27/3/2007 22:51

have added a new feature the hotel checker. Its a very good search engine, lists properties correctly, its real pro looking. I imagine henoo holidays and flights will soon follow that format

[yump] 27/3/2007 18:31

Advertising Web Service is an interesting one.

I wonder what most people's idea of being "Listed on Google in 48 hours" is ??
It sounds impressive.

But actually I can list any company in the next 5 minutes and so can most affiliates, by using Adwords...
which is what this company does. You pay them £30 a month PLUS whatever your Adwords campaign costs you (you get billed separately by Google).

Similarly imo most people's idea of "guarantees your website generates traffic from Google", would be that your site appears in the unpaid search results.

Very clever wording, which imo takes advantage of the slowish "internet marketing learning curve" which many businesses have. They're obviously wording their headline marketing to read like a natural search engine results service, in order to attract customers.

I think IBG could do without them as a merchant.
Why don't they just say 'Did you know you can pay for adverts for your business in the small boxes on the right hand side of Google' and it may work out more cost effective than trying to optimise your site for search engines ?

To be fair, when you get to the site it explains about Adwords (after a while) and the rest of it seems reasonable enough and it probably works reasonably. I expect they've got automated accounts, so they're basically charging £360 a year for management of your account. Depends how much work they put in I guess.

[aleman] 27/3/2007 17:11

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[12345th] 27/3/2007 12:09

end of tax year selling?

[yump] 27/3/2007 11:27

Despite the being patient stuff, it has to be said that although IBG supposedly might not be well understood or known etc. etc., the market overall is actually quite close to its high and there are plenty of small stocks trading on p/e's of 15 or more on 2007 earnings forecasts, which are not as widely followed as IBG.

I hope the chart isn't saying something that I should be listening to, but have learnt from bitter experience that trying to second guess what is happening with stocks that are behaving badly is actually risky. Usually I've lost money by selling out when I've just really been guessing.

Plenty of stocks that are growing at the same rate as IBG have gone up and pulled back onto somewhere near a bottom (upward) trendline.

I think its only in retrospect that we will be able to figure out why the chart has been flat, when it might be expected to be at least on a steady uptrend.

For all we know, someone might be divesting and dripping stock onto the market everytime there are buys. A long period of that will certainly stop the mm's from moving the price up much. Witness the early days overhang.

PS.
There must certainly by now be plenty of investors who are making use of taper relief, because IBG's big rises happened quite a while ago. Many of the other small companies have had relatively recent rapid rises, so they won't have had persistent selling for that reason anyway.

[68steve] 27/3/2007 11:15

Although since results we are 20%+ down but hopefully more to do with general market sentiment than IBG performance...